Current developments of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology leverage a broad array of contact center applications and flexible call-handling capabilities. In addition, contact channels have expanded from voice to include other applications such as, email, web, fax and the like. Computer telephony integration (CTI) allows integration and coordination of many customer contact channels, e.g., voice, email, web and fax, with computer systems.
It is typical for all CTI information to be provided by a central CTI server and certain CTI standards require knowledge of the entire call flow.
The following definitions are provided of certain terms that will be used below.
A “call” as used herein may be any communication, for example, between a customer and one or more agents, over a communication network. The routing of a call may be controlled by a call exchange such as such as a Private Branch Exchange “PBX” may also be referred to as an “interaction”. A “call” may be for example a voice call, e.g. VoIP, but for the purpose of this description a call may also be a text or video call for example. It should be noted also that a “call” may be a one-way interaction where there is a one-way “conversation” or flow of RTP packets from a user endpoint to the recorder, or a “call” may be a two-way (bi-directional) or multi-path interaction between two or more parties where there is a multi-path “conversation” or flow of RTP packets from each of the multiple user endpoints to the recorder.
“Data” relating to a call as used herein may include “content data” and “metadata”. The content data may include for example the data that is exchanged between parties to a call, such as but not limited to audio, video and text. “Metadata” may be for example information other than content data which relates to the call and/or content such as but not limited to start time, stop time, identities of parties, route of call, file name and filepath of location of content data, IP addresses and more as will be described by reference to specific examples.